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The stone fireplace was installed on 13 April 1671, not without difficulty:
...This day there did fallout a remarkable accident, never to be forgotten. The drawbridge at Cawdor fell, carrying in a great stone, and with it 24 men, and the Laird himself. Some were hurt...
so recorded Brodie of Brodie in his diary.
The mantelpiece commemorates the marriage in 1510 between SirJohn Campbell of Argyll and Muriel Calder of Cawdor. The allegorical design and the inscription in dog Latin have never been satisfactorily explained or translated, all of which is highly satisfactory. The writing may mean 'In the morning, remember your creators'. Or it may mean something quite else, like 'If you stay too long in the evening, you will remember it in the morning'.
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The silver plates with the Cawdor coat of arms are English, made by Guest & Cradock in 1807; the silver centre-piece is an 18th century Portuguese shaving bowl, and the glass is modern French (Baccarat). The Chinese armorial plates are Quianlong ( 1736-95) and the large dish is Yongzheng (1725-35). The wicker-backed embroidered chairs are probably Anglo-Dutch, in the manner of Daniel Marot. The plaster ceiling is late Victorian and rather pleasing.
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The rococo boulle clock is French, by G. Champion of Paris. The metal object on the console never adorned a cow's neck. It is a hand chapel-bell, dating from the 9th century, and was used at the family (then Catholic) church and burial-ground at Barevan, near here, the site of which is pre-Christian Celtic, if not ancient pagan, although the present ruin is c.1300. Bells of this sort were regarded with veneration; this one was not made in a cast, it was hammered into shape from a flat sheet of iron, cut in the outline of a double axe-head, and then folded, rivetted at the sides, and given a skin of bronze.
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